odd thing....following your thread here....I have a desktop that does exactly the same behavior. At random times I will return to the machine after a period of time and it will not come "alive". eventually only hard reset through holding the power button....but the machine will bark....

Hi
From the symptoms, I strongly suspect that you have a hardware issue. The laptop and its batteries are about 10 years old now. I have a laptop with the same processors (not a Dell) and I had to buy a replacement battery to make it useful, although on mains power it was fine. Dells of this vintage had a circuit in the power supply that communicated with the motherboard to make sure you were using a Dell Power Supply. If you did not use Dell or a Power Supply with the right part it would play up. The Bios info gave you details.
Also, print out what /proc/acpi/battery/BAT0 says about your battery. It may give some clues.

Hi
From the symptoms, I strongly suspect that you have a hardware issue. The laptop and its batteries are about 10 years old now. I have a laptop with the same processors (not a Dell) and I had to buy a replacement battery to make it useful, although on mains power it was fine. Dells of this vintage had a circuit in the power supply that communicated with the motherboard to make sure you were using a Dell Power Supply. If you did not use Dell or a Power Supply with the right part it would play up. The Bios info gave you details.
Also, print out what /proc/acpi/battery/BAT0 says about your battery. It may give some clues.

The power supply is genuine dell, the battery is new but compatible.
====> NOTEBOOK BATTERY (BAT0) <====

Just looked at an old Dell Latitude 100L that I have and looked at the Bios Settings. On page 5, I have a Bios setting that allows me to control screen brightness for both Battery only and Power Supply On. If you have the same feature could you check it. On mine I have set it to full brightness, both on battery only and with power.

Had an HP DV6 laptop with much the same problem. Intermittent dead battery. Was running Slackware64 14.2 at the time. Anyway, my son took over ownership of the computer and wiped the drive and installed Windows 7.
Like magic the battery is now free of problems. All symptoms went away.
Weird

Just looked at an old Dell Latitude 100L that I have and looked at the Bios Settings. On page 5, I have a Bios setting that allows me to control screen brightness for both Battery only and Power Supply On. If you have the same feature could you check it. On mine I have set it to full brightness, both on battery only and with power.

Hi
Set them both to max brightness but switched the psu off and a few seconds later it hung.

Hi
OK, so it's not the Bios settings. We need to explore a bit further.
1. If the Dell is powered up into the Bios and the Power Supply disconnected, will it switch off or will it keep going?
2. If you have the old battery (hoping it can hold some charge) could you fit it and then run Puppy to see if it can remain on for a while without the Power lead.
3. If you run another distro like Mint does the lack of a a connected Power Supply still cause a shutdown?
4. When you clean up the fan, etc, carefully inspect the components around the power supply socket and the battery connectors. I have had dry joints in these parts which has caused failures.
It is a process of eliminating potential causes of the problem.

Hi
It will stay in the bios on battery half an hour at least, no hang.
The old battery had the same problem.
I did install lubuntu and daphile, same problem.
Probably nothing for it but to open it and check for dry joints.
Strange thing is xp runs all day on battery.

Stripping, cleaning and inspecting is needed. However, I can't, yet, see why Windows XP is fine and Linux gives a hang. Another thought is that a bios update might solve the issue. A10 is the latest June, 2013. Its worth a try if your bios is not that.
http://www.dell.com/support/home/uk/en/ukbsdt1/Drivers/DriversDetails?driverId=R186796

Thanks for trying that, That is what I suspected would happen. So the problem is really "Linux won't run with battery power in Dell Latitude D620" not necessarily Puppy itself.

So I point that out not as a cop-out or to give up on Puppy, but rather look into Ubuntu support or search message boards for a fix or solution, because they have much larger user base than Puppy and may have someone with this laptop and similar issue. I've seen some reports or similar issues of Linux on laptops.

What I was getting at earlier with the suspend inquiries, is that AC power loss *can* trigger suspend, or lid switch or other messages.

Your laptop was designed with Windows XP in mind, never intended for Linux. So the theory is that Windows XP is handling the AC power loss message sent to OS properly, while Linux is not handling it properly, going into suspend or some other mode. Might be a kernel issue, or could be a power management config, or possibly just not resolved for Linux on your hardware.

Probably not related, but I have seen Linux falsely detect a laptop is docked when it isn't. If so this manual item may have bearing:
"If a computer loses AC power while docked to the Dell D/Dock or Dell D/Port, the computer immediately goes into low-performance mode."

Of course he would have been using an earlier kernel. On some occasions, I have used Fedora because it tends to have the latest drivers that are needed if you have new devices. Perhaps give Fedora a go.

I have reread all the post quite a few times now and after you have done the stripping and cleaning, etc, if you still have the problem there is still a few things you can do. I have realised that we are not certain whether the laptop is working and just the screen is switched off. Maybe if you used the vga connection to an external display to see if that is the case.

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